How do you load very large bitmaps into the material editor?

[agentdark45]

I downloaded the 2gig set of blue marble erth images from the nasa website, but the problem is I cant load them as a bitmap in the material editor? Each image is 21600 x 21600, and they have to be merged with another 21600 x 21600 image to make a complete spherical map of the earth.

The first problem is Max cant load a 21600 x 21600 image, and photoshop cant stitch together 2 21600 x 21600 images, it says that I have run out of ram, even though I have 1gig of ram and a 5gig swapfile.

Can I somehow split the images into smaller ones and map them onto a sphere or Is there some other way to get the images into max?

[marina]

You can try using PNG format. It consumes less memory

[J_Bug]

That may work but if not, slice them into eight JPGs and creating a multi sub-object mat. You might also want to do this with the cloud maps so you could take care of it at the same time in Photoshop.

--Jon

[agentdark45]

If I slice the maps into 8 how would I map them onto a sphere? Would I apply a spherical UVW map to each mats id? and how would i select the sphere if it was a geosphere?

[J_Bug]

I'd guess that it would be more complex to map a geosphere this way. You'd have to figure that out but I don't think it would be eight slices.

For a standard sphere primitive use spherical UVW. No need to apply multiple mapping. Just tell them all to use Channel 1 and manipulate each map in the appropriate multi-sub through tiling and offset. Try these numbers in order of material ID starting with the most NW "octosphere I guess " section and going counterclockwise over the Northern hemisphere then down to the Southern and counterclockwise...

Northern
Offset U=0.125, V=0.25
Tiling U=03.99, V=1.99

Southern
Offset U=0.125, V=-0.25
Tiling U=03.99, V=1.99

That should do it. You may need to play with each of the ".99" tiling values by +/- .01 to get the mapping seamless. I think this is an issue with MAX. If you only want a certain section of the globe then just ignore the rest. Don't forget the specular You'll be kicking yourself later if you do

Good luck,
--Jon

[mike_kennedy]

why do you need to actually use the 21000 rez version?
Couldn't you just reduce the size in PS? If you are doing an earth zoom, most folks use compsiting trick like switching versions as you zoom in when you go through clouds and such.
When you zoom in you don't need the entire earth texture, just the area you are zoomed in on. A 4k texture for the entire earth at a distance (not ground level...)is over kill unless you are rendering for Imax.
Most programs will have problems with an image that large. Renderman can deal with it due to image tiling and caching, but Max does not do that.
Even render man is really designed to work with 4k and 8k textures...not 21000k, that's a little tough...
do the math
it's
14,929,920,000 bits
so just to load the image you would need 1.5 gig's
1 gig will not cut it.
reduce the image to a decent size or make it 16 bit to load it..

[J_Bug]

Hey Mike, I know this is an old topic but I was thinking about it last night and all I could think of to accomplish this was something like the near/far falloff map if even that. Would you have to write a MAxScript for your suggestion? Or I wonder if LOD would work but just use the same geometry with different materials

--Jon